How to change the Wall Street Journal without pissing off bankers

The battle for the hearts and minds of New York newspaper readers (and every other elite reader in North America) was further joined yesterday as the Times reported on the ongoing efforts at the Journal to cut the Times’ grass: “The Wall Street Journal’s transition to more breaking news and shorter articles will continue in the coming weeks with a make-over of its Marketplace section.”

It’s all part of the rethinking and re-engineering that’s been under way ever since Murdoch bought the paper last fall—more general interest news, more politics, shorter, snappier stories accompanied by a reduced emphasis on long investigative pieces and offbeat features.

And yet, as yesterday’s Journal demonstrated, the paper is still capable of journalism in those categories that’s light years ahead of the competition. Two terrific long-form cover stories appeared, one offbeat (how bamboo is ravaging American gardens) and one in-depth (a reconsideration of the Malthusian dilemma—too many people, too few resources). All of which points to the difficulty of the task Murdoch has set his editors: change the greatest business paper on earth without pissing off its core constituency.

Still, as one Timesman said to me when I asked how he handicapped the race, “They’ve got 60 billion bucks. We’ve got three billion… I don’t see it ending well for us.”